L'inclusività nel rituale sportivo. Per una revisione dell’eredità durkheimiana nella sociologia dello sport

The Durkheimian legacy is mostly associated, within the sociology of sport, with the functionalist perspective and an exclusionary view of ritual as a marker of boundaries between in-group and out-group. After reconstructing how this exclusionary view of ritual characterises the main traditions of thought concerned with sport, the essay aims to overturn this reading and show how Durkheim offered an interpretation of ritual as a ludic-aesthetic practice with the potential to be inclusive. In the Conclusions, the relevance of Durkheim’s legacy and the continuity between sport and ritual in modern rationalized societies are discussed.